This view receives ample confirmation in the newly published version of the "Studies." The reader may reasonably take objection to the foregoing, and may inquire: "Was not Beethoven, then, master of the mere technicalities of composition by the time he reached Vienna? He had been engaged in studying the theory as well as the practice of music for over ten years, under a master, himself well known as a composer."--Let us hear Nottebohm on the point. The instruction imparted by Neefe, although calculated to be eminently helpful as regards "the formation of taste and the development of musical feeling," was yet "from a technical standpoint unsatisfactory," being based, not on the strict contrapuntal system of the early ecclesiastical writers (the system which alone offers the necessary _discipline_ for the composer), but rather on the lighter and more superficial method of the _new_ Leipzig school, of which Johann Adam Hiller, Neefe's master and model, was one of the leading exponents. Beethoven seems to have divined intuitively where his weakness lay. For the radical defect which he recognised in his training there was but one remedy, viz., to lay aside preconceived opinion; to go back in all humility to the very _Urquelle_, the Fountain-head, of Harmony, and trace out thence for himself, slowly and painfully, the eternal channel of LAW, _within_ which the mighty sound-flood may roll and toss at will, but _beyond_ whose bounds, immutable and fixed, no mortal power may send it with impunity. Turning to the "Studies," we find no trace of a disposition to claim exemption from toil on the score of genius. On the contrary!--commencing at the very foundation (the names of the different intervals), every branch of composition is taken up in its turn--simple, double, and triple counterpoint in all detail--and worked at with a will (several of the exercises, being written and rewritten two or three times), until we arrive at Fugue, where, for a reason shortly to be noted, there is a halt. What shall we say to the picture thus presented to us?--A young man self-willed and impatient by nature, at an age when submission to direct instruction is, to say the least, unpalatable, voluntarily placing himself under the yoke--a poet, within whose soul divine melodies plead for freedom, and thoughts of fire press hard for utterance, resolutely keeping inspiration under, until he shall have penetrated into the structure of language--a painter, in whose desk lie sketches, marvellous in freshness, vigour, and originality, occupying himself for weary months in the study of anatomy! Truly our Beethoven at this period, as at a later, comes well within the practical definition of Genius; his "capacity for painstaking" was "infinite." Not so, however, his patience, as we shall presently see.